A similar backdoor athleticism fuels “Esplanade,” Taylor’s celebrated 1975 masterwork set to a series of Bach’s violin concertos, bursting the seams of its pedestrian framing (an ode to a woman running for a bus). What starts as buoyant turns explosive—dives and rolls busting forth like fireworks, skirts and ponytails flying. Tenderness persists across this sea change, sometimes rendered romantically, sometimes through friendly exchange. Madelyn Ho and Devon Louis are especially spry.

Taylor was a dynamo of ensemble work, finding gripping notes of cohesion outside of simple unison (although there’s some of that here too, and it’s unfailingly tight-knit). “Concertiana,” his final creation before his death in 2018, epitomises his flair for synchronicity, the troupe stretching, sprinting and skittering with the cohesion of pack animals. They roll downstage like turtles fresh from the egg, bound like springboks crossing the savannah. Reptilian in shiny teal and black, they strike an organic unity, even when navigating complex helices and tricky syncopations. Joy, melancholy and rumination bleed together like a Rothko gradient, a motif helped along by vivid, fluctuating colourscapes on the backcloth.

With its notes of reflection and rapture, “Echo,” a 2023 work from resident choreographer Lauren Lovette, plucks a similar chord as these canon pieces while also making space to contemplate its central theme—masculinity—from a contemporary perspective. Wearing jagged black skirts from designer Zac Posen, the all-male cast convenes and disassembles, their interactions shaded with tinges of confrontation and companionship. Lee Duvenek is a central force, deftly straddling the dichotomies that collide here: animal heat versus human reserve; the earthly and the divine. Bare-chested and crouching, his fist to his face, Rodin’s Thinker-style, he lithely finds his way beyond the binary. Kevin Puts’s score, intense and pensive, is a dynamic match.